This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Rouge National Park: a place for nature — and farmers?

Agriculture will continue on 60 per cent of the land, shutting out the public but providing a bulwark against development.

The thin green line begins here, where Markham's new Boxgrove community buts up against Bob Hunter Park, soon to become part of the Rouge National Urban park. (CARLOS OSORIO / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

By Marco Chown OvedStaff Reporter

Sun., Nov. 25, 2012

As Toronto grows larger and denser, it needs a bigger backyard.

That was the idea, at least, behind this year’s announcement of the creation of Rouge National Urban Park — 14,000 acres of protected green space on the doorstep of millions of Torontonians.

But as the future park takes shape, it’s becoming clear that more than half of it will be closed to the public.

Parks Canada planning documents show the Rouge National Urban Park, at least initially, will be at least 60 per cent farmland, leased to private farmers and shut off from visitors.

The future of the Rouge is visible to any observer at Bob Hunter Park, which sits at the crossroads of three competing interests: housing, farming and wilderness restoration.

Here, heritage trees have been planted on former farm fields.

Looking in one direction, you can spot a combine harvesting a field.

Just across the street in the opposite direction lies the new Boxgrove subdivision in Markham. It will be the last urban development on this eastern edge of the GTA, butting right up against the new national park.

Scheduled to be absorbed into the national park, Bob Hunter Park shows how the Rouge can stop sprawl in its tracks and become a natural playground for residents of the GTA.

Friends of the Rouge, whose members have been fighting to preserve the Rouge Valley for decades, officially welcomes the federal government’s national park plan but worries the “urban” designation will be used to water down environmental protections already in place.

Parts of the Rouge Valley have been occupied by farmers since the 19th century. But Robb says many farm operations are becoming bigger and more intensive, and therefore stand in the way of restoring the Rouge to a more natural state.

“It’s not a park; it’s an industrial farm,” Robb said. “The interests of a few people are being put above the interest of the public and the interest of the environment.”

To underline the fact that this isn’t pristine wilderness, a whole new category of “urban” national park will have to be created.

No other national park in the country has farming on it, says Pam Veinotte, the field unit superintendent for the Rouge park, slated to open at the end of 2013.

About 75 farms will operate within its boundaries, which Veinotte says will become part of a “holistic approach to protect this landscape.”

Unlike the classic, remote national parks, the Rouge will be easily accessible to nearly 20 per cent of Canada’s population — about 6 million people in or close to the GTA.

It will be a “world-renowned example of what can be done for urban conservation … to help people connect with nature,” Veinotte said.

The Reesor family arrived in the Rouge Valley in 1804 and has been farming ever since. In 1972, their farm, like many others in the area, was expropriated by the federal government for the planned Pickering airport.

That airport has yet to be built, and in the meantime the families forced to sell have been leasing their own land back from the government.

Dale Reesor has been able to continue the family’s farming tradition on leased land without problem. That is, until five years ago when leases on certain parcels weren’t renewed and his fields were planted with trees.

While he acknowledges the value of replanting, Reesor worries about the future of food production in the Rouge.

“We can’t be losing good farmland to trees,” he said.

Reesor says he’s lost 120 of his 800 acres to tree planting and has had to scale back his sweet corn operation.

Currently farmers sign five-year leases, which can be cancelled at any time with one year’s notice, Reesor said. Parks Canada has promised 20- to 25-year leases to farmers to encourage them to make investments on the land, but remains free to repurpose land when those leases expire.

Until the Rouge Urban National Park is opened, Mike Bender is in charge.

The Rouge Park general manager of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority says that, while some reforestation has been done, there’s no plan to evict the vast majority of the farmers because they’re the best bulwark against development.

A small number of farmers using land in areas slated for high-traffic recreation have had their leases terminated. Others who own their land are receiving offers to buy.

“It’s a willing-buyer, willing-seller arrangement,” Bender explained.

Farmers have to be able to farm, he says — it’s better than letting them sell to developers.

“The best value for them is to sell for development, but if they do, the public interest isn’t served,” he said.

Allowing them to continue farming ensures that the land remains subdivision-free, though not open to the public.

The fight to preserve the Rouge Valley has been raging for decades. What began in the ’80s as farmers and environmentalists pushing back against developers has turned into a complex preservation arrangement among the City of Markham, the federal government and the conservation authority.

The new national park will unify land management in the area and provide guaranteed funding — something that’s been lacking for years. But critics argue that, in exchange, environmental protections are being watered down.

Until this summer, Rouge Park was governed by the Rouge Park Alliance, a group composed of representatives from each constituency and members of the public.

The heart of the alliance was laid out in two management plans painstakingly developed with widespread input in 1994 and 2001. Both documents state an ecological vision for the Rouge, where “human activities will exist in harmony with the natural values of the park.”

In 1994, the management plan stated that “the primary focus of the vision centres on the protection and appreciation of the park ecosystem.”

Instead, the document lays out a vision that “celebrates and protects, for current and future generations, a diverse landscape … (that) offers engaging and varied experiences (and) … promotes a vibrant farming community.”

By shifting the emphasis away from natural ecosystems and toward mixed land use, the very soul of the park is lost, says Gloria Reszler, a longtime volunteer with the Friends of the Rouge.

The solution, she says, is to put the environment back at the core of the park mission by gradually increasing public access, restoring nature and phasing in small-scale, organic agriculture to create a breadbasket for Toronto.

“Unsustainable cash-crop farming should be phased out,” she said. “It happens on private land across Ontario and shouldn’t take place on precious park land.”

Projections show that there could be as many as 12 million people living in the GTA in 20 years’ time. If Rouge lands aren’t permanently preserved, the pressure to develop them will be too great to stave off.

That’s why it’s important to protect as much land as possible, farms included, says Alison Woodley, National Conservation Director at CPAWS.

“Although they may not be areas that people can use, they have enormous ecological value,” she said.

Animals can use those fields as agricultural pathways to travel all the way from Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine, she said.

That vision is what early activists for Rouge protection dreamed of. But when Glen De Baeremaeker led nature walks through the Little Rouge Forest and the Finch Meander back in the 1980s, he was convinced it would all be bulldozed and replaced by subdivisions.

Today, the Toronto city councillor is enthusiastic about the proposed national park and doesn’t see the farms as a bigger problem than the ones that have already been overcome.

“It’s a miracle we’ve protected so much,” he said. “Better 60 per cent farms than 60 per cent 40-foot lots.”

He’d also like to see the farms scaled back over time, their fields replanted with trees. But that fight is for another day.

Now that the Rouge has been declared a national park, it has the highest level of protection Canada offers.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com